Pre-treatment

Introduction: Cotton is the leading fibre in Textile Industry. Cotton is still the "King" of fibers because most of the world's apparel is made of Cotton. Apart from its fairly good strength, it is considered to provide comfort due to good moisture absorption and wicking properties1. It is estimated that approx. 20 million tons of Cotton is processed worldwide yearly. Unlike man made cellulosic fibers such as Rayon and Lyocell, Cotton must be properly prepared for Dyeing, printing and finishing. Typical pre-treatment of cotton involves: Scouring (Conventional and Enzyme Processes ) Bleaching Peroxide removal Bio-polishing Mercerizing Optical Brightening Objectives of pre-treatment: Removal of seed husks Removal of foreign substances from the fibers Lowest possible fiber damage High degree of Whiteness Good Physical/Technological ratings High color yield Levelness of the effects High and even Hydrophilicity / Rewettability

Scouring
On cotton fibres, this treatment removes fatty and pectic substances, softening motes and preparing the material to absorb the subsequent treatment agents. Scouring is usually carried out in soft water additivated with textile auxiliaries such as absorbing agents, detergents, emulsifying agents, caustic soda and/or Solvay lye and sequestering agents. Alkali make the fibre swell and enhance the action of surfactants. This treatment can be carried out on filaments, yarns and fabrics. Instead of the traditional scouring process, it is also possible to carry out an enzymatic scouring process (bioscouring) to remove noncellulosic material from cotton fibres, to make them more easily wettable and enhance the subsequent absorption of finishing liquors. The scouring of pure silk is a degumming process used to remove sericin (silk gum) from fibroin floss. Sericin is the gummy element which keeps together the fibroin floss and gives the silk a hard hand and dull

appearance. It is carried out on yarn, on dyed yarn, piece-dyed fabric or on products ready for printing. The treatment, which causes a loss of weight ranging between 24 and 28%, gives the degummed silk a lustrous appearance and a soft hand; the treatment is carried out with soapy solutions or with buffer dissolving agents. It is also possible to use enzymes (protease), which hydrolyses sericin. Recently, a treatment with H2O at 120C has also been successfully applied especially on yarns. On wool, the scouring process removes oils and contaminants accumulated during upstream processing steps and can be carried out on slivers, yarns and fabrics with solutions containing sodium carbonate with soap or ammonia, or anionic and non-ionic surfactants, which carry out a softer washing to avoid any damage to the fibres. The scouring process applied to synthetic fibres removes oils, lubricants and anti-static substances, dust, contaminants and can be carried out on yarns and fabrics (when warp yarns have been bonded, the treatment is called debonding). It is carried out by means of surfactants, detergents and emulsifying agents. Scouring is usually carried out by means of continuous or discontinuous systems, with the same machines used for downstream treatments; temperature, processing time, pH, concentration of reagents, depend on the fibre and on the machine used. Incomplete scouring processes usually originate dyeing and printing defects due to different degrees of wettability and to inconsistent affinity for dyes of the material. Substances Cellulose Hemicellulose Pectin Lignin Soluble substance Fats Cotton 82.7 5.0 0.7 0 1.0 0.6 Linen 62.4 17.2 2.3 2.5 3.9 1.7 Textile Fibers Hemp 67.0 16.1 0.8 3.3 2.1 0.7

Ramie 68.8 13.1 1.9 0.6 5.3 0.3

Jute 64.4 22.0 0.3 11.8 1.2 0.3

Note: The composing part may vary for moisture content and growing region.

Bleaching:
Bleaching treatments are applied to eliminate any impurity and obtain a pure white tone, to prepare substrates for low-density dyes or prints and to level off undesired tone variations. Bleaching agents mainly used for cellulosic fibres are sodium hypochlorite and hydrogen peroxide. They both require the addition of sodium hydroxide in the bleaching liquor to make it alkaline it by favouring the formation of the bleaching ion, which in the first case is the hypochlorite ion and in the second one is the perhydroxyl ion. When using hypochlorite the pH must range between 9 and 11 and the temperature

must not exceed 30 C. In fact, as far as the pH is concerned, pH values below 4 give rise to the formation of chlorine while pH values ranging between 4 and 9 give rise to the formation of hypochlorous acid: these chemical substances affect the fibre negatively and do not perform a bleaching action. After the bleaching with hypochlorite it is necessary to carry out an antichlor treatment. Fibres must be treated with hydrogen peroxide, which completely removes the chlorine and avoids the formation of chloramines, which, in drying machines, could generate HCl dangerous for cellulose. With hydrogen peroxide, in the presence of alkali, little motes can be eliminated and the autoclave scouring can therefore be avoided. The optimum temperature ranges between 80 and 90 C and the pH between 10.7 and 10.9. Hydrogen peroxide at a concentration of 1-2 vol can be used also for silk after degumming, with a pH of 8 .9, at 70-80 C for 1-2 hours. On wool, it is possible to improve whiteness with a bleaching process using hydrogen peroxide, with a vol. range of 1 to 3, stabilised with pyrophosphate with a pH value between 8 and 9, at a temperature of 45-50 C for a time which can vary from 30 minutes to 3-4 hours. In alternative, it is possible to carry out a treatment with a pH value of 3-4, in acid environment for HCOOH at ambient temperature; in this case, the formic acid reacts with peroxide, generating performic acid, which carries out the bleaching action. This method slightly damages the wool but gives good results. From an environmental point of view, hydrogen peroxide is more suitable than hypochlorite since it has a lower impact on the environment and effluents can be decontaminated with simpler operations. It is recommended to add sequestering agents to the bleaching liquors. Another bleaching agent used in textile processing is sodium chloride (suitable for synthetic fibres) that takes advantage of the oxidising action of chlorine dioxide generated as a result of the hot acidification of the solution of this salt. Unfortunately, chlorine dioxide is a toxic substance and attacks stainless steels; therefore it is necessary to work in hermetically closed units equipped with suction systems with resistant materials such as stoneware. Bleaching chemistry: Since hydrogen peroxide contains an atom of loosely combined oxygen, it has powerful oxidising properties. Due to this it has a bleaching action on textile substrate. In a neutral aqueous solution, hydrogen peroxide is ionised in to perhydroxyl and hydrogen ions. H2O2 HOO- + H+ This perhydroxyl ion is supposed to be the active bleaching agent. But the bleaching effect is dependent greatly on the pH of the solution. In acidic or neutral pH, perhydroxyl and hydrogen ions are found in solution. These hydrogen ions have a tendering effect on cellulose due to its acidic nature. It is found that in acidic or neutral pH tendering effect of H+ ions is more than the bleaching effect of the HOO- ions. This tendering will in turn

impart yellowness to the cotton substrate. So it is not recommended to carry out bleaching in acidic conditions. On the other hand, in alkaline condition following equilibrium exists: H2O2 + OH- HOO- + H2O Here we can see that along with perhydroxyl ion and water molecules are in equilibrium. Due to this in alkaline pH we get more bleaching effect and less tendering of cotton. This is the reason why bleaching is carried out in alkaline pH. But it is observed that in alkaline medium although the damage to cotton fibre is less, the stability of peroxide itself is also very less. In absence of stabiliser, in alkaline medium at temperatures as high as 100- 1100C, the entire peroxide will get decomposed in less than 10 min. The presence of water hardness and the iron contamination in commercial processes further enhances the action of peroxide decomposition. If the bleaching is continued in such a way, that not only the bleaching efficiency will be hampered but also the uniformity of bleaching will not be good. Such material when taken for further dyeing will lead to problems like lesser depth, patchy dyeing etc. So it becomes mandatory to use a stabilising agent in bleaching baths to get good bleaching performance. Conventionally Sodium Silicate was used as a stabiliser for peroxide bleaching. It stabilizes the peroxide solutions considerably even at pH of 10. It takes about 54min. for peroxide to decompose to extent of 50% in presence of silicate. The stabilising affect can be explained as follows: Na2SiO3 + Ca+2 Ca (Sio3)2 + Na+ Na2SiO3 + Mg+2 Mg (Sio3)2 + Na+ This way the water hardness is removed from the solution. But this advantage is accompanied by a disadvantage that the calcium and magnesium silicate formed are sparingly soluble in water and get deposited on the surface of bleaching equipment leading to abrasion of fabrics, difficulty in washing off. Due to this silicates have been replaced by new generation stabilizing agent. One of these category includes magnesium based compounds like magnesium hydroxide, Magnesium EDTA (Ethylene Diamine tetra acetic acid), copolymer of styrol- maleic acid with magnesium haloids, magnesium silicates etc. Other group of stabilising agents include polyorganosiloxanes such as polymethyl and poly-ethyl siloxanes which along with stabilising effect have an added benefit of reducing the abrasion resistance when used for bleaching of yarn or sewing threads. The world is facing a crisis of energy consumption, and the situation is worsening day by day. Correct practices for energy, consumption has become essential in everywhere of life, from industrial as consumer practices. The textile industry as a whole has taken some measures in this direction by combination of several step processes into one step process, the less use of water in processing to reduce the expense of energy in drying and chemical processing at lower temperatures. The entire bleaching process takes place near about 3 hours for a full white process and about 2 hours for a RFD process.